Archive for September 2006

a) Wasting time on the internet with MySpace, YouTube and Ebay, plus all the rest of it. My RSI continues. b) Working for a “living”. c) Building hangovers and repairing them. d) Being slightly less prolific than I used to be with regards to doing music stuff, but still pretty much tinkering away same as ever. e) Domestic routines.

2. The fact that my Dad reads it stymies the nonsense a bit. It’s fair enough that he reads it, but it’s fair enough that the nonsense gets stymied. I’m quite sensitive to audiences.

3. I’m a lazy sod.

The reason the rest of it doesn’t get updated, the gigs and stuff, is that there is some kind of problem with the geekery problem behind the scenes, and my webmistress has started a new job and is very busy. Also I owe here for the rent on this space but she won’t take a cheque and I’m too thick to do internet banking. We have reached some kind of impasse.

And the other reason it doesn’t get updated is that nobody bothers reading websites any more because MySpace and messageboards and ting are killing them, innit. You’re probably not even reading this right now.

Also I should revamp the site but I think me and the webmistress can’t bear to even think about having that conversation.

(to recap briefly: Pete Um is on a sort of “tour” doing a few dates in Germany and Holland, I think in February 2005)

Yeah, so there I am in Rotterdam with my new pal Teppei, waiting for our hosts to show us to this “campsite” that we’re meant to be staying in for the night. Turns out that they are not joking, because the campsite is totally real, and is in fact an indoor campsite. One of the buildings that these people have been given the use of is some kind of old bar/restaurant and they’ve converted about half the floor space into a ridiculous fake campsite, with real tents pitched on Astroturf! In fact, as we are ushered into this surreal environment, a girlish voice yells “Hi! We’re your groupies!” from within one of the tents. We realize this is a joke, but we laugh nervously. Then Peter bids us goodnight by saying “OK, I’m going to go now. I hope you have a nice…conversation…” and giving me an amused grin. Perhaps he sensed that I was feeling a little unnerved by the prospect of getting very quietly stoned in a fake campsite with two sleeping Dutch women and a very shy Japanese dude who spoke next to no English. Luckily I had nothing to fear as the empathic qualities of the weed and the fact that me and Teppei were fluent in the international language of weird-music addiction made for an extremely pleasant little bifter session. A typical exchange went something like: “You know… Suicide?” “Ah, Suicide! I love Suicide! Really, really good!” “Yeah, really good.” He told me about how he spent some time alone in some kind of hut in one of Japan’s national parks, a place where marijuana grew wild and bears roamed free. It sounded nice but I think I might have got extra scared of the bears. Eventually I went to bed and as I lay there in the darkness I realised to my profound surprise that I wasn’t a paranoid and quivering mess, and that, moreover, I was actually enjoying the tour in general. It was quite a shock, and it gave me confidence for the remaining leg of the tour.